The
American public remains largely uninformed about the world in general, Cole
said, but when it comes to the Middle East, it focuses only on the violence and
fundamentalism there. Meanwhile, it overlooks the wave of fundamentalism going
on in other parts of the world like India where the far right-wing party just
won the elections to govern the 1.5 billion population.

“If
this happened in the Middle East, it would be big news,” he said.

Cole
also pounced on the media’s record of both perpetuating myths about Islam and
the Middle East and its preoccupation with terrorism while it ignores things
going on in most other regions of the world.

“Cable
news seems to have a tremendous influence on public opinion even though it has
small audiences of 500,000 viewers and only two to three million on a good day,”
he said.

He
pointed out that the climate change conference going on in Paris, which is the
most important issue for humankind, wasn’t much covered on cable TV news before
Saturday's breakthrough.

“Climate
change is simply not in the national conversation,” he said, “but violence in the
Middle East makes headlines.”

Likewise,
during the late 1990s to the early 2000s, 5.4 million people were killed in the
central African wars but the NBC evening news never reported this even though the
United States imported several minerals from that region.

The
American media doesn’t report much on Europe either, he said, that is until the
November terrorist attacks in Paris.

“The
attacks were done to polarize people and make Christians want to beat up on
Muslims,” he said. “It was meant to trick policymakers, and they fell for it.”

Three
days after the bombings President Francois Hollande declared that France was
now at war with Islamic State.

“Terrorism
is not an act of war,” said Cole. “It is a criminal act of a violent gang. The Paris
terrorists were screw-ups from the city’s suburbs. They thought they could
infiltrate the stadium in Paris and blow up their belt bombs during the game in
order to create an enormous global spectacle.”

Cole
explained that only one of three bombers was able to scalp a ticket to the game,
and he wasn’t admitted. When the other terrorists realized they couldn't
accomplish their goal at the stadium, they went to a Cambodian restaurant and started
shooting.

Cole
said the terrorists were clumsy and stupid. Even so, one newsman characterized
the incident as a “superbly orchestrated military attack.”

“Terrorists
aim at psychological attack in order to breed fear and hatred,” said Cole. “Don't
fall for these acts of terrorism. You can’t overthrow the French government by
attacking a Cambodian restaurant.”

Terrorism
is the weapon of the weak, he continued. It is illegitimate and always wrong.
Terrorists were not elected to govern yet they commit violence against civilians
to push their politics. Cole likened Robert Dear's November attack on the
Planned Parenthood facility in Colorado Springs as a terrorist’s attempt to
change Roe v. Wade.

“So
being Muslim is not the issue with terrorism,” he said, “radicalism is. We have
this blind spot.”

American
politicos' response to the terrorist attacks in Paris was equally reactive when
they proposed a change in U.S. refugee policy, he said.

The
United States has accepted 750,000 refugees, including many from Afghanistan
and Iraq since September 11. Only two refugees were deported for suspected
terrorist activity, which involved sending money to Lebanon. Over the past year
America has let in 16,000 refugees from Iraq alone.

“Refugees
are an upright group of people who are carefully vetted for 18 months,” said
Cole, who reminded the audience that the U.S. invasion of Iraq produced these
refugees where at least 200,000 Iraqis were killed and 4 million were displaced
by U.S. bombings. (He also acknowledged that 4,500 Americans lost their lives
in Iraq and over 2,200 in Afghanistan.)

“Where
is our sense of social morality?” asked Cole, who said that the United States also
refused to let in Jewish refugees from Europe during World War II because it
was afraid they were German secret agents.

“The
United States is a great country,” said Cole, “but we sometimes have these ugly
periods” like slavery, racism and the Know Nothings of the 1850s who tried to
stop the immigration of Irish and German Catholics because they regarded these
newcomers as hostile to republican values and controlled by the Pope in Rome.

Trying
to stop Iraqi and Syrian refugees from coming into the United States feeds the
anti-Islamic craze, said Cole. In order to counteract such reactions, he
encouraged the audience to become more informed about Islam, to go to a mosque
to meet Muslims and to help first generation Muslims integrate themselves into
the local community.

“And
be active in politics,” said Cole. “Write your congressional representatives. In
America, if there is no public voice, you're a sitting duck. The problem is
that we vote and then forget about politics. That's when the corporations move
in and monopolize the conversation and the policies.”

During
the question-answer period, the audience was keen on knowing how to fight
terrorism.

“Refuse
to be afraid and refuse to hate,” said Cole amid loud applause. “Too many
people also fall for the propaganda of Islamic State or Daesh, as it is called.
Daesh uses the term ‘Islamic State’ to trick us. They are like a Mexican drug
cartel announcing that it’s the Vatican. No journalist would fall for that.”

While
the media portray Daesh as conquering vast territories, the reality is that
they have overtaken only a few desert towns, said Cole.

“They
have no port, no airport and no air force,” he said. “They are not a state but
rather a set of desert pirates who loot people and call it taxation.”

When
the leader of Daesh called himself a caliph, the Arab people laughed, said
Cole.

“What
Daesh is really doing is defaming 1.5 billion people.”

Cole
emphasized the fact that Iraq and Syria are like the Wild West, and the only
place where Daesh can exist.

“To
consider them a state is ridiculous,” said Cole.

So,
how can Daesh be defeated?

“We
have to get the Baghdad government to stiffen the resolve of the Iraqi army,”
said Cole. “We also have to realize that while Daesh took 40 percent of Iraqi
territory in summer 2014, the Iraqis have since recaptured 25 percent of it.”

Cole
also suggested that a free Syrian army must fight Daesh as well as the Saudis
who seem more focused on fighting Yemen.

“We
sold them our fighter jets,” said Cole, “let’s have a talk with their king and
tell him we are not happy with him.”

Cole
also agreed with President Obama’s four-point plan that includes:

1.Hunting down terrorist plotters throughout the world
and using air strikes to take out Daesh leaders and their infrastructure in
Iraq and Syria.

2.Continuing to provide training and equipment to Iraqi
and Syrian forces fighting Daesh on the ground and deploying Special Operations
forces that can accelerate that offensive.

3.Continuing to lead a coalition of 65 countries to stop
Daesh’s operations by disrupting plots, cutting off their financing and
preventing them from recruiting more fighters.

4.Pursuing cease-fires and a political resolution to the
Syrian civil war so that Syria and all countries can focus on destroying Daesh.

“Daesh
is involved in human trafficking, killing POWs and making a spectacle of
death,” said Cole. “They are regularly denounced by Muslims.”

Biography

Dr. Juan Cole
is the Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History at the University of

Michigan. For
three decades, he has sought to put the relationship of the West and the Muslim
world in historical context. His most recent books include Engaging
the Muslim World
and Napoleon’s
Egypt: Invading the Middle East. He has been a regular guest on PBS’s
Lehrer News Hour, and has also appeared on ABC Nightly News, Nightline, the
Today Show, Charlie Rose, Anderson Cooper 360, Democracy Now! and many others.

In addition
to his extensive writings on Egypt, Iraq, and South Asia, Cole also covers the
politics of Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iran in his regular column at The Nation.
Cole continues to study and write about contemporary Islamic movements, whether
mainstream or radical, whether Sunni and Salafi or Shiite. He is fluent in
Arabic, Persian and Urdu, reads some Turkish, and knows both Middle Eastern and
South Asian Islam. Cole is president of the Global Americana
Institute, a non-profit project that aims to translate important books by
great Americans and about America into Arabic. He has lived in various
parts of the Muslim world for some 11 years and continues to travel widely
there.